A Room of One's Own

• Prize
  Gold in Portfolio/Personal, 1st Place winner in Portfolio
• Photographer
  Yanyan Zhao

Taking inspiration from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) .This project mainly focuses on an exploration of the private spaces of East Asian women. In particular, I am interested in the ways that private space defined by East Asian women reflects and helps to develop an interior life which can be in tension with their unique and subtle external cultural environment. These private spaces which are outside of the official gaze of the dominant culture, with its own values and expectations, allow for moments of authenticity to emerge which I am interested in capturing and expressing.

Working through photography, Yanyan Zhao uses a highly feminine approach to explore desire and intimate spaces, and how they interact with external society. Her work is often biographical and self-explorative, reflecting on and analysing her own psychological world, hidden thoughts and fantasies, often deeply intertwined with the social identity of “women”, especially “East-Asian women” in a transnational cultural context. Born in 1997, China. She currently lives and studies in London, receiving her MA from the University of Arts London. Her work has been exhibited in UK, Spain, and USA .